9th Circuit Court Records Now Online

In September of 2012, a group of Hawaiian prisoners filed suit against Governor Neil Abercrombie, Ted Sakai the Director of the Hawaii Department of Public Safety and Corrections Corporations of America, the owner of the Arizona prison in which they are incarcerated. The ongoing case hinges on the question of whether the native Hawaiian inmates are freely able to practice their religion in the Arizona jail.

Documents from the hearings are now available online, as part of the Ninth Circuit (the Pacific, West Coast and a couple other Western States) Court of Appeals’ new effort to publish official documents in the online Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys, for short).
Now you can read about Michael Mooney and Oklevueha Native American Church of Hawaii’s tangle with U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder over cannabis and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or view the large handful of cases filed against big banks regarding predatory, shady practices and foreclosed homes.

FDsys maintains information from eight appellate courts plus 19 district courts and 24 bankruptcy courts. The site is also a “repository of information from Congress [and] the executive branch,” in addition to the over 695,000 federal court decisions and 2,750 published court opinions.
The resource is free to the public and searchable, with a collection of court records dating back to April 2004.

“The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has always promoted public access to the courts,” said Clerk of Court Molly C. Dwyer in the June 7 news release. “We are pleased to join this effort to make the court’s published opinions even more readily available and at no cost to the public.”